Fidel Castro’s eldest son kills himself

Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, the son of the late Cuban revolutionary president Fidel Castro, killed himself on Thursday after being treated for months for depression, Cuban state-run media has reported.

“Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, killed himself this morning,” the Cubadebate website said.

Castro Junior, 68, also known as “Fidelito” because of how much he looked like his father, had initially been hospitalised for depression and then continued treatment outside of hospital.

Castro Diaz-Balart’s mother was Mirta Diaz-Balart, a woman from Cuba’s aristocracy whom Castro married in his youth before beginning the revolutionary struggle that later brought him and his brother Raul to power.

A nuclear physicist who studied in the former Soviet Union, Diaz-Balart had been working as a scientific counsellor to the Cuban council of state, as well as vice-president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, at the time of his death.

His father, who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States during the cold war, died on 26 November 2016 aged 90. The Guardian UK